Ssssooo , what is sibilance ?

Sibilance is the worst. Nothing screams “unseated vocal” like a bunch of “s”s and “t”s that hop right out of the mix. The issue with taming sibilance is that it lives right in the presence and “shiny” range of the vocals – that nice top end down to about 2-3k.

Imagine recording the following phrases and you'll get an idea of how sibilance occurs.

Six sizzling sausages

Sing a Song of Sixpence

She sells sea shells on the sea shore

This article will be about taming sibilance – and the pros and cons and trickery of each mechanism for doing so.

Avoiding sibilance at the source

Sibilance comes from an exaggeration of sound that projects from the roof of the mouth. Certain tongue shapes, space in the front teeth, shape of the palette, or just a learned way of speaking can produce overly sibilant delivery. Knowing this, there are a number of ways we can try to deal with problem before it hits the tape… err … computer (2012 right?).

Choose the right mic!

This almost goes without saying, but if the vocalist is overly bright, you might want a darker microphone. A ribbon mic, a softer dynamic mic (like an RE20), or a vintage sounding condenser (U67), might be a good grab. Something that has a rolled off, smooth top end, that will take well to EQ. There is no con to this approach.

Choose the correct mic position.

You may want to tip the mic a bit off axis, aiming it slightly left or right of the mouth, or perhaps somewhat down. Angling the mic will mostly change the way the treble range is picked up, as lower frequencies are somewhat less directional. The con is that the evenness of the frequency response will be somewhat disrupted by grabbing an off-axis response.

The bubble gum trick

If sound projecting from the upper palette is the problem…. eliminate the upper palette. Have the vocalist chew up some gum and stick it to the roof of his/her mouth. This will cut down the sibilance significantly. The big con here is that this can be awkward for a performer – if it throws off the performance or sense of pitch, it's not worth it. But it's an option.

Managing sibilance in the mix

The issue with sibilance is too fold. First – because of the way we hear, we are more sensitive to higher tones even at lower volumes. So even if the “s”s and “t”s are below the other vocal sounds, we're still gonna hear them clear as day. Second, sibilant sounds are very fast. So here's a few ways we can deal with sibilance effectively.

Manually ride the fader

Hear an “s”, turn it down. This is a transparent approach. The con is that this is time consuming.

Wideband De-Ess

Another basic approach, this is compression that is reacting only to the frequency range. This is much faster than fader riding, however, it tends to leave the leading edge of the “s” unaltered. It makes your sibilant sound less intrusive but spikey, and may be just as annoying. The other con is that you'll tend to catch some of the treble of non-sibilant words and pull down the overall “spark” of the vocal.

Frequency selective De-Ess

This is the same as wideband, except instead of turning the whole signal down, you're just turning down the treble range, as opposed to the whole of the signal when it triggers. This is good for evening out the tone, but has all the drawbacks of wideband, plus it induces eq artifacts (although they are fairly minimal).

So those are the basic 101 techniques. Here's some that can get better results, although they require a bit of trickery. I'll start with my favourite.

Pre-triggering the De-esser

This is a really cool technique. It's a major pain in the ass to set up in analogue mixing, but it's easy in digital. Make a copy of your vocal on a separate track. Move the copy ahead of the main vocal by 50ms. Put a De-Esser, or a multi-band compressor (like Waves C6) – something with an external sidechain – on your main vocal. Key it to the copy.

Through this setup, every time an “s” comes through on the copied signal, it will activate the de-esser on the main signal – but it will do it about 50ms earlier than when the actual “s” from the main signal would occur. This allows the de-esser to reach peak gain reduction BEFORE the “s”. If you set the release for about 100ms, you'll knock out that “s” sound without leaving any spikes on the leading edge. This is a very transparent way to do this.

Over De-Essing

Another way to get rid of “s”s is to go overboard with the de-esser, so that it's working even on parts of the vocal that aren't sibilant. If you then feed this into an EQ, you can boost your high end back up to regain your lost treble. The pro of this is that it has the added benefit of making the treble of the vocal very present without making the “s”s jump. The con is that the high end will almost assuredly become less smooth unless you are using a really good de-esser and treble boost. I use this technique on vocals that only become sibilant once I add a lot of high end to them – which is fairly common in Pop/Hip-Hop/Dance productions.

Smooshing your high end

This one takes a little guts. One of the beautiful properties of minimal phase EQ, is that if you use the exact same EQ and do the exact same amount of boost, followed by the exact same amount of cut, you will nullify your artifacts and come out with the same signal as when you started. Using this principal, you can add like 10-20db of treble gain to your vocals, compress the vocals, and then do the same amount of attenuation after the compressor and get a surprisingly transparent form of de-essing. It sounds weird because it's so extreme, but you get your normal compressor reacting more to the sibilance. Give it a try, you may be surprised. The major benefit to this is that it works well in the analogue realm, not just the digital.

How do you deal with sibilance ?

There are other techniques for easing out sibilance. These are the ones I've found most useful. I should also say that using a combination of these techniques will probably get you further with less artifacts. If you have your own techniques for approaching sibilance, please share in the comment section below!

One way I avoid the sibilance in some of my mixes is to have the vocalist back off the mic a tiny bit, or by automating around the 6 band and making it go down smoothly when approaching sibilance.

PeteJonTebar on Sat 23rd Jun 2012 -
2 years agoVery interesting post. Everything I've read I try to do as it says. Like GameboiX, I also stand back a few inches from the mic -- more if I have to scream. Fantastic thread, I recommend all vocalists to read this.

Pete

Tumbleweed on Sun 24th Jun 2012 -
2 years agoThis is definitely one of the most usefull straight up takes on the issue I have read...Happen to be working on a vocal track that it applies to and while I am familiar with the more common approaches (deesser & eq)the tactic of duplicating the track to get the attack a touch further in front is a great idea...I have yet to try it...but makes sense & has me thinking....thats always a good thing...even if it sometimes hurts the head...Thanks for this one....

StereoMathematics on Sun 24th Jun 2012 -
2 years agobring out the pop guard. make your own. take a wire coat hanger and bend it into a shape that can accommodate a crew sock. mount it on your mic stand in between the mic and mouth.

Mahloo13 on Tue 26th Jun 2012 -
2 years agoNowadays every is eating the mic when performing....a bit of distance can help definitely not to mention it acts as an EQ...the further in the back you go the less emphasized certain frequencies are.

@MrFunk - A compressor is most likely gonna bring out sibilants and not tame them...the compressor does not react to the sibilants as it's not high energy and it will react more to the lower frequencies below the S sounds thus you will compress the vocal and when you make up gain you are raising the S sounds as well.....not to mention most compressors suck out the low end (to a certain amount) thus emphasizing the mids and highs which will result in more (perceived) sibilants.

A pop filter doesn't really help.....

Experiment with de-essers and with the above tips....there is no wrong or right but you have to experiment and find the best solution.

Mahloo13 on Tue 26th Jun 2012 -
2 years agoIf you record a good take you might use the EQ to CUT instead of BOOSTING.....I'm ready to bet all my money on the fact that you won't even have to use a de-esser yet you'll have a super nice and crisp sound.

MrFunktastic on Wed 27th Jun 2012 -
2 years agoI am glad you said there's no wrong or right way because in this blog we are sharing what works for you, correct.

I've applied my methods and it worked for me. Experimenting and sharing is the way to go.

I'd always experiment and see what works best for you and that's what this looper-thread was intended for anyway.

Boogieskippo on Tue 3rd Jul 2012 -
2 years agolove the de-ess technical into for the high end vocals good stuff.

FreeRadical on Wed 4th Jul 2012 -
2 years agoPersonally i like to use a pair of tights.
Nothing to do with proximity effect or sibilence. I just like the way they feel.

MarieDailly on Fri 6th Jul 2012 -
2 years agoLol, FR!
I've come to the conclusion Im a total moron when it comes to any kind of technical jargon!
The only thing I really understood there what what Mahloo said (& that FR likes to wear tights, but.........)
So looks like Im stuck with whatever sibilance appears since my voice is pretty quiet & I usually end up having to limit it etc!

Looperman on Thu 19th Jul 2012 -
2 years agoDid nobody spot the relevance of the thumbnail pic that goes with this post ?

djbladerunner666 on Fri 20th Jul 2012 -
2 years agoI'm actually a little not too cognizant about the terminology used in this post or some of the following replies, But I understand what is being pointed out and I have to say I really like the suggestions.

I use FL Studio to edit and record my vocals. I have found it to be fairly easy with a compressor and 2 Paramatic EQ's by having one EQ set up for mid boost with a low high end sizzle then the compressor set up for a master effect then add another EQ with a low end boost, medium high end torch and lower mid. For an added bonus if you add another EQ exactly as the previous one after that and drop the High end down a little you can also get rid of any white noise that the microphone may pick up and it will soften the s's and t's to match the rest of the vocals db.

alividlife on Tue 31st Jul 2012 -
2 years agoI think angling the microphone is the best way.
I got a lot from the article, so thank you looperman.
IMO, sibilance, off-axis is the right idea. But just mess around with placement and find what works best because other things come into effect like the singer, mic choice, compression, etc, etc. You can also try using a de-esser, or switching mics to something like a SM7. But yea... that's all been covered here.

I prefer a pencil over a pop-filter. But I am probably crazy.

TONETIGER on Sun 26th Aug 2012 -
2 years agoI overstand the point of the subject.People lets put more focus on the feel of the track.

Infrastation on Sat 29th Sep 2012 -
2 years agolol, all I do is put a sock on it literally. That just shows how much I can spend on goodies like new mics...

Although it sounds like I'm joking, covering a mic with a cloth or a tissue can get rid of a lot of that annoying sth sound, or you could just remove the s and t sound from your lyrics...